Like Fire and Ice
by mysticalrain
Summary: Sometimes, reality doesn't allow for happy endings. This time, she had no choice but to let go of Ron.


Hi there everyone!! I'm back after a loooong sabbatical. This story stemmed from a personal experience and I wrote it on a whim. Then, I figured it was perfect for an angsty Ron-Hermione. It IS extremely emotionally driven and sappy, and I hesitated before I posted this – but because it does have a personal anecdote attached to it – I was unwilling to change it much.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any characters associated with it.

Hope you enjoy! And remember to review :-D

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_...just like Fire and Ice._

_Perhaps it was the impossibilities that she hated. _

_It was the memory. Laughter and joy, tears and anger. _

_It was the perfect imperfection. Insanity and freedom, comfort and commitment. _

_It was their beginning, their end and their incapability of having a middle. _

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She didn't know what attracted her to him. She didn't know what had _always _attracted her to him.

She just knew that after five years, her heart still ached for him.

She had watched him as he had scurried around, running errand after errand for her parents, making sure that the decorations were JUST right, making sure that they were serving her favorite entree for the wedding dinner, ensuring that the groom's family had all the accommodations.

She glanced at her beautiful hands, blooming softly with a large diamond ring on her finger. Her vision blurred as tears surfaced from a pain so deep, she couldn't even begin to understand its origin.

She hadn't felt this way in years, she had never allowed herself to feel this hurt surfacing, along with emotions tied to Ron.

She was getting married tomorrow. To a wonderful man who loved her. And here she was, pining over a man who had never really been hers.

She shook her head and let her eyes wander to him. He slept peacefully, in a position that was as familiar to her as her own heartbeat – two pillows under his neck, his arms crossed and raised over his head. Through her tears, she smiled.

In six hours, she would belong to Terry. In six hours, she wouldn't have a choice of loving the only man who had ever captured her heart.

Maybe that was why, she had woken up after everyone else had fallen asleep. Maybe that was why she had felt urged to tiptoe out wearing her wedding dress, foolishly wanting Ron to see her first in such finery.

Halfway through putting on her veil, she had felt an almost foreign despair rise up her chest. She had rushed to his room, her hair down to her back, dressing up quite forgotten.

Now she stood at the doorway, hesitant to wake him up. She needed him now, if not as a husband, then as a friend, to calm her nerves, to assure her that she was doing the right thing.

Her feet seemed stuck to the floor, her mouth was dry, she couldn't. She couldn't.

She knew that she'd lose the courage to marry Terry if he woke up. She knew that the minute his eyes opened and he flashed his dimpled smile, she'd be his all over again. She couldn't risk it.

So she stood at the threshold, incapable of moving forward and just as incapable of leaving.

He slept peacefully, his chest rising and falling with every deep breath. Another sharp stab of pain wounded her and she almost turned away. Turned away only to realize that she might never see him with such vulnerability and intimacy.

Turning back to look at him, she sighed slowly. Tiptoeing to his bedside, she gingerly knelt next to him. The tears that had prevented her from seeing much earlier, spilled over her eyelids and ran down her cheek.

As mature as he looked while awake, he resembled a vulnerable child when asleep. His expression was peaceful, his hair unkempt. His face honest and unmasked, she could once again see the man who had told her that he didn't remember life without her.

Hesitating only for a moment, she reached over to run her fingers through his hair softly. Now that she was touching him, she longed to linger, to touch what she was forbidden to. Giving in to her desires for the first time in five years, she traced a finger down the side of his cheek, marveling at how familiar it seemed. She felt starved and quickly pulled back. Leaning forward, she let her lips brush his forehead lightly and the ache in her heart grow to dizzying proportions.

Her throat was clogged and she wanted nothing more than to bury her face in his neck and cry. Cry for all that they had, and all that they had lost. Cry for what they had secretly guarded, cry for their beginning and their end, and cry for their incapability of having a middle.

She wanted to say so much, but no words escaped her. She wanted nothing more than to call off her wedding, to tell Terry that she couldnt, she just couldnt get married to him, to hope and pray that Ron would come to her then, and ask her to be his.

But she knew that such dreamy hopes never gave way to reality. She knew that she would find herself standing next to Terry tomorrow, gazing at the altar, hating herself for putting them both there. And she knew that in time, she would learn to accept the utopian life that Terry made for her and learn to be happy and satisfied with her career and her family. And she knew, that never ever again would she love another man as she did Ron.

So, she took a deep breath, forcing the painful block of tears to dissolve in her throat. Her eyes lifted to his face again and she began to speak.

" Didn't think we'd be here, did you?" she chided affectionately. " Always thought it'd be us tomorrow, us in front of the altar, us in our new home and our two children, us growing old together." and because thinking of that image made her heart thud painfully, she forced herself to forget it.

"Till this very moment, I had never REALLY considered the possibility that we might not end up being man and wife. Till right now, I had always held faith in your love for me, thought foolishly that you'd somehow stop this nonsense. And how could you not? When this marriage is so wrong in so many ways? And how could I? Deceive the only man -" she choked on her words momentarily and continued "- the only man who has ever loved me for who I am? How could I have let you take control of everything that I've ever felt without realizing that you wanted nothing of it?"

The tears continued to stream freely down her face, her fingers still lingering on his cheek. Her voice grew determined and her eyes steely.

" Not anymore. I waited five years for you to come to your senses. I waited five years for us. Not anymore. Tonight is the last night that I'll spend being in love with you. And tomorrow, I will walk down to Terry and let him love me as only he can. I'm letting you go Ron, for now and forever."

Leaning down, she kissed him softly, her palms on the sides of his face. She then stood up, her heart shattered, her mind made up, her spirit resigned.

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_Like Fire and Ice - that's just what they were. A perfect impossibility. A paradoxical beauty._

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